TUNING digest 955

PAULE wrote:

> Matt Nathan,
>
> I have heard too much music from around the world performed vocally and
> on continuous-pitch instruments which nonetheless gravitates toward a small
> set of pitches to dismiss this as a result of the practicalities of
> instrument making or other temporal or geographic biases. These pitch sets
> are often very idiosyncratic and rarely contain any semblances of small
> integers beyond the 3-limit.

Yeah, I hear that too. Perhaps it is more a phenomenon of the melody and the
pitch set developing together rather than one generating or limiting the other.
Either way, I hear in my own imagination, music which is not limited by a
pitch set, but is more guided by intervalic connection, especially in
regards to chord progressions and continuous modulations. I also get the
sense that there's more to the expressive nature of melody than picking
from a set. Starting with just a wail, which is a glissando with a curvature
which evokes emotion, there's something going on there with regards to shape
and time which is transcendent of the idea of a "scale".

> >> ...I have written a (mostly) triadic piece where successive shifts of
> >> chromatic semitones, 36/35s, 49/48s, and a limma, adding up to a perfect
> >> fourth, have a certain melodic integrity, but only in 22-tet because all
> >> these intervals are represented by 55 cents!
>
> >I'm not sure quite what you mean, those 3 intervals don't add up to 4/3.
> >I'd like to hear your piece though. Is there any way I can?
>
> Which 3 intervals? I mentioned 4,

I see.

> and I did not specify the number of times
> each occurs,

Ah.

> except to say that the last occurs once. Well, numbering the
> four intervals in question from 1 to 4, they go like this: 1 2 3 2 1 4 2 3
> 2. That adds up to a 4/3.

Or to 22tet's approximation of 4/3.

> I play this piece so much that people are humming
> long sequences of successive 55-cent intervals, which tells me it's good
> enough to include on my first tape of 22-tone music (I'm still waiting for
> the guitar, though) despite its having nothing to do with my theories. So
> I'll keep it to myself for now.

Ok.

Matt Nathan

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